While I was at the Gamescom expo in Cologne, I had the chance to speak with John Rafacz, Communications Director at Treyarch, the studio making Black O

ps II. We had a long and fascinating talk about the game's single-player campaign and the interesting new features it will introduce to the franchise.

I started by asking Rafacz about the unique feel of Black Ops, and how it differs from the storytelling in the Modern Warfare titles made by Infinity Ward. "The Treyarch method of storytelling is to take a period of history and weave our fiction through it," he explained. "When you play that single-player game, there are points of historical reference for the player, and you think, oh, I thought I was going here, but that's not what really happened."

After the World War 2 setting of World at War, Black Ops allowed Treyarch to take on the largely unexplored territory of the 1960s, the peak of the Cold War. Now Black Ops II has brought them to the 1980s, and the twilight of the Cold War. "A third of Black Ops II takes place in the 1980s, so we're weaving our fiction through those events too," said Rafacz.

For the first time, this game will also be taking the Call of Duty franchise into the future, the not-too-distant world of 2025, where warfare is mostly waged by automated drones, computer hackers can be as devastating as front-line soldiers, and a new Cold War has arisen between the USA and China. "Again, we wanted to make sure the game is authentic as possible, so we've talked to futurists and asked them what the world will look like ten or fifteen years from now, and we're still weaving that storyline. It's just a different way of telling that story."See more : Warlords of Draeno